The Visit Nepal Decade and five million tourists by 2032
On the 23 rd of September 2022, the Nepali Cabinet approved a plan by Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation to declare a Visit Nepal Decade from 2023 to 2032. The twin primary aims of the campaign will be to attract five million tourists by 2032 from an earlier all-time high of 1.2 million visitors in 2019 and increase the average spending per tourist per day to USD 125 from the current USD 47. Both are daunting tasks but not as ambitious as a third aim, discussed and discarded as being impractical; to increase the average length of stay to 20 days per tourist from the present 12 days. It will do well to recall here that past Visit Nepal campaigns were limited to a particular year. Visit Nepal ’98. Destination Nepal 2011, Lumbini Tourism Year 2012, and most recently the aborted Visit Nepal Year 2020. Each of those in addition, save the Lumbini one, had a single aim - denoted in number of tourists to be attracted to Nepal in that particular year. In 1998 the aim a...